“Do you work there?”
“Did, but I had what was mighty nigh a sunstroke last summer; had to quit. It was damned hot up there under the roof. It's the same old factory his father had.”
“Goin' to work again?”
“Next week, if I'm able, but I dun'no' whether I can stay there longer than till spring. It's damned hot up there under the roof.”
The man who spoke had a leaden hue of face, something ghastly, as if the deadly heat had begun a work of decomposition. Andrew looked at him, and his hatred against the rich man who had built himself a stately mansion, and kept his fellow-creatures at work for him in an unhealthy factory in tropical heat, and had condemned him for being too old, was redoubled.
“Andrew Brewster, where have you been?” Fanny asked, when he got home.
“I've been to Leavitt,” answered Andrew, shortly.
“To see if you could get a job there?”
“Yes.”
Fanny did not ask if he had been successful. She sighed, and took another stitch in the wrapper which she was making. That sigh almost drove Andrew mad.